


Settling In

by rjn



Category: Baywatch (TV)
Genre: Lawguard, Other, your favorite 90s trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:08:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29661540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: I thought I saw suggested a Lawguard Craig defends Certified Badass Eddie (lol) story but maybe I suggested it myself in a retro 90s delirium. Who cares? It happened and now you're reading it, so who's the ridiculous one now? Still me? Okay.I did not reread this, not even a cursory second glance after typing, so it is going to be littered with more typos than usual, but, I mean, imagine what the scripts were like for this show.... Oh, man.ETA: Wait, I found the suggestion. For phnelt. Not exactly what you suggested, but hope it works.
Relationships: Eddie Kramer/Craig Pomeroy/Gina Pomeroy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Settling In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phnelt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phnelt/gifts).



Craig holds Eddie’s suit jacket out for him to slide his arms in. He feels a little like Eddie’s captor this way, like he’s sneakily pulling him into the lawyerly world of tailored straitjackets and silk full-Windsor nooses.

But of course, Eddie had flung himself headlong into this mess. For a lifeguard, he’s never been very good at judging the depths of certain hazards.

Eddie’s hair is still wet from his shower and Craig cringes a little at the dampness that immediately spreads into his collar. He spins Eddie, straightens his lapels for him and gives his chin a gentle knock with his fist.

“You look good,” Craig tells him.

He thinks, not as good as you look in your t-shirt and jeans and grubby sneakers. Not nearly as good as you look in your lifeguard trunks when you’re not on suspension.

Eddie sighs. He’s been doing that a lot lately, but suddenly it strikes Craig like less of an outward sigh and more of a swimmer’s inward gasp. Like the hyperventilating breath before the deep submersion.

Craig puts a half-full mug of coffee into Eddie’s hands and tops it up with warmer stuff. He receives a tiny nod of gratitude, just a quick slant of the neck in return.

He’d like to be more reassuring somehow. Both Craig and Gina have been feeling a tad helpless, on the shore of Eddie’s despair, unable to reach out and pull him in.

Gina has been busying herself with acts of comfort, as if readying warm blankets and hot cocoa. Or maybe more like pouring a stiff drink and ordering too much pizza, that might be closer to the way Gina and Eddie seem to fall together in trying times.

Craig has been ticking away with scheming logic. That’s his method. Plotting escape routes and weaving conspiracy. In general, acting like… well, like Eddie’s lawyer.

Craig would like to be more reassuring and tell Eddie that things like this always work out for the good guy, but they both know that’s not true.

And this was the first time Craig had ever seen Eddie’s record in full.

There’s a problem written there. A tricky three-month stretch where Eddie had been _almost_ eighteen. _Almost_ -enough in the eyes of the law, anyways. In an era that had overlapped with Eddie being _almost_ reformed. And _almost_ , but not-quite-yet the picture of selfless lifeguard heroism.

That quarter year of _almost_ might be what sinks him. Because this was far from the first time Eddie had punched a guy in the face.

It was the first time he’d knocked a guy senseless on the first swing, though, and broke the guy’s occipital bone and damaged his eye. And the first time the guy had been the brother of the scummiest personal injury lawyer in town.

That’s the most frustrating thing for Craig. That while he is trying to hard to make Eddie feel better about the process and potential outcomes, Eddie still just genuinely feels terrible about hurting a guy.

From everything Craig has found out, hurting the guy prevented the guy from hurting someone else, but Eddie has had trouble working through the transitive property since the moment he was wiping the guy’s blood from his knuckles.

“This will be a lot easier than the arraignment,” Craig says.

He means for Eddie, emotionally, because the shock of the accusation has passed. But for Craig, the plea hearing is far from easy. He has never doubted Eddie for a second and he’s backed up his faith with witness interviews and cold hard facts. Eddie is not guilty of anything but protecting someone who needed protection. But Craig also knows this: Eddie Kramer _feels_ guilty.

How else could he feel? After a lifetime of being told you’re not good enough. Not good enough to be cared for or looked after. Not good enough for a family. What Eddie deserves and what he thinks he deserves are outposts an ocean apart.

“Okay,” Eddie says, but he clearly doesn’t care. Why should anything be easy for him?

He manages another few sips of coffee under Craig’s pointed stare, but doesn’t touch the date square Gina had left on a plate as dessert-breakfast bribery to get him to eat something this morning. Eddie with no appetite disturbs her to no end. Craig picks a loose bit of the crumble topping away for himself. It melts in his mouth. That Gina went so heavy on the butter reminds him how lucky he is to have her. They’re on the same page for this, anything to help Eddie, including caloric subterfuge.

As he’s reveling in the sweet taste sense memory of his wife, she bursts through the door. Two shopping bags and some kind of heavy black equipment bag, like she carries when she is in a photography phase.

Craig relieves her of the black bag and she digs into one of the paper shopping bags.

“I got it,” she says, brandishing a tie in a reserved plain blue.

Craig sets the black bag down gently by the door and helps Eddie out of the jacket he’d just finished helping him into. He flips up the damp shirt collar for Gina to string the tie around his neck. Earlier she had deemed all of Craig’s ties too light and cheery for a loaner. He’s a beach lawyer. Eddie is a _defendant._

“You got it?” Craig echoes meaningfully.

His eyes meet Gina’s over Eddie’s shoulder, a mirror of one another’s concern.

“I think maybe,” she says.

Eddie is too preoccupied with obsessively loosening and rearranging his new tie that he doesn’t see Craig shoulder the camera bag on the way out the door.

The hearing goes as well as can be expected. Eddie pleads Not Guilty. Craig’s deep-down fear that he would throw himself before the judge expressing his lifelong internalization of guilt and remorse does not come to pass.

Eddie’s official lawyer, Craig being hesitant to assume lead counsel on a criminal proceeding, is a woman named Phyllis, a friend of Craig’s who accepts payment in the form of Gina’s consulting service buying suitable paintings for her firm’s offices.

Phyllis had seen something in Eddie as easily as the Pomeroy’s had, and she will fight for her client viciously, but she is also prone to speak to him in soft tones and she lays her hand on Eddie’s shoulder from time to time like she wants to gently shake him. Like he needs to be woken up to the idea that it’s all going to be okay.

Phyllis walks them through the courthouse after the hearing and directs them to wait in a hallway while she takes a call.

“We got it,” she says when she rejoins their somber huddle.

Craig feels the slightest upturn of his mouth getting away from him. Gina squeezes his arm hopefully. Eddie, standing between them, hunched over in his cloud of sorrow, is oblivious.

“We got it,” Phyllis cautions, catching the uptick in Craig’s mood. “But we still have to confirm what ‘it’ is.”

“I already know,” Craig tells her in his own ‘these are the facts’ litigator tone.

Because there was never any question that Eddie had acted in defence of the girl. There wasn’t even a question of whether they would find witnesses, because every single lifeguard at Baywatch and all of Eddie’s friends had canvassed every square inch of Venice Beach. It had been Gina, though, who found the aspiring filmmaker and videographer.

There was never any question that Eddie punched the guy for a good reason. The only question was how much of it was caught on tape. If the black bag they delivered on the way to court had yielded enough for Phyllis’s investigator to call her and tell her that they “got it”, Craig is confident. He’s certain that no trick angle or shadow of perspective is powerful enough to erase Eddie’s nature. Eddie is far more than “good enough”.

They would never presume to celebrate, after the charges are dropped and “The Guy” is facing legal inquiries of his own. There’s nothing to celebrate when a man was hurt and a girl was terrorized too much to come forward. There’s no joy in the return from the brink, from where the whole direction of Eddie’s life energy was nearly obliterated, his hard-won course reversed by a simple lack of information. But there is the need for comfort, for something to guide them through the sudden relief of tension.

So Gina cooks, fills the kitchen with dozens of dishes, large platters of all of Eddie’s favorites. Part of her wanted to shut the doors, close ranks on their unique little family unit and cover the coffee table in cartons from the takeout menu for Yang Li’s, but this is okay for now.

Craig circulates, passing around all of their gratitude to Phyllis and her people and the Baywatch gang, and everyone who worried and fretted and fought for Eddie all along. He is Eddie’s spokesman, lawyer, and friend, but at the moment his primary job is as a buffer. Keeping the noise, the well-wishing and analysis at bay for the time being.

And Eddie sits, slumping down on the sofa in the slick suit that he’s only ever worn twice now. The tie, dangling untied around his neck, is a loaner this time, one of Craig’s too-light for criminal court paisley jobs that Eddie would have teased Craig about if he’d been in a different frame of mind. He’s visibly exhausted. His raw edges discernably bare in the hopes that nobody tries to get too close. The people who care about him will let him be, give him the space to breathe until things scab over.

Even Mitch knows enough to dig deep into his reserves of sensitivity, to keep his distance. He only makes eye contact with Eddie. Gives him the approving nod, the signal of ‘always had faith in you, kid’. Mitch had officially applied to end Eddie’s suspension ages ago, before even the tape came to light, but this unofficial exchange means something to Eddie too.

Craig, in his duty as traffic controller, wrangles everyone out the door as early as possible. There’s the feeling of a collective weight lifted from everyone. He disingenuously implies that sure, they’ll stop by the bar later to meet up with everyone. Nobody falls for it.

And then it’s quiet. It’s been exceedingly quiet in the apartment for months now, but this quiet is absent the silent frustrated screaming of the whole ordeal. And then it’s not quiet, because Eddie finds the remote control in the cushion beside himself, and turns on the television.

Craig is surprised to see him on the sports station. Eddie’s status as a “skilled amateur” in boxing had figured largely in the early pre-hearing gossip mill. But there’s no fight on this time, just a replay of a ball game. And while baseball is far from Eddie’s favorite sport (too slow, too distant), there’s something apposite in the rhythm of a sunny day and the hushed roar of a large crowd.

It’s like watching waves, Craig realizes. As close an approximation of a quiet day on the beach as you can get holed up in an apartment after sundown.

He moves closer to the couch and Eddie shuffles in the opposite direction, an invitation to sit with him. The two of them are settled back, awash in the low stakes procedural of the third inning, when Gina joins them.

Craig feels the slightest twinge of envy when Eddie immediately melts in her direction. Gina pets his hair and lets him lean against her. But then his face turns to Craig, with the impatient look of ‘what engraved invitation are you waiting for’ emerging on it.

Craig moves in closer and stretches his arm across the back of the sofa, pulling their combined weight together until the balance shifts and he’s the foundation. And he doesn’t feel so much like there’s been some kind of entrapment this time. He’s not unilaterally pulling them into his world. Their shared world is expanding around them. Breathing.

Eddie sighs between them, and this time it feels like the calming release of coming home.


End file.
